All right, let’s talk about the latest news from CES 2018 in Las Vegas related to 4K Ultra HD, Blu-ray, and HDR…

First up, the HDR10+ Alliance has announced that Warner Bros. has joined Samsung, Panasonic, 20th Century Fox, and Amazon in supporting their open standard “dynamic metadata” competitor for Dolby Vision. Any content producer who wants to use HDR10+ for their media needs only to pay an small annual fee, but there are no royalty fees, unlike Dolby Vision which requires a license fee for every use.

It will be interesting to see what impact Disney’s purchase of 20th Century Fox might have on this alliance, if any. Will Disney join or will Fox’s participation become more passive?

On a related note, our friends at Scenarist – which creates software and systems for Blu-ray, Blu-ray 3D, DVD, and Ultra HD title authoring – is adding HDR10+ support into the work flow of its Scenarist UHD authoring system, currently used to create many Ultra HD Blu-ray releases. They’re actually demonstrating it in person at CES 2018. So you can expect movie software that supports HDR10+ to start arriving this year. Word is that Amazon will be adding HDR10+ to its 4K streaming offerings in the next few months as well. [Read on here…]

This has been an interesting couple of months for me, to say the least. As you may be aware, I’ve just spent the last eight weeks completely immersing myself in all the various ins, outs, and nuances of the new 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray format. I’ve watched disc and after disc, and have reviewed nine of them so far (you can find them here, with more on the way). I’ve put the format’s first player, the Samsung UDB-K8500 (which I’ll review more fully soon, but about which I’ve got some key things to say below) through its paces. I’ve spoken with many of the leading studios, engineers, and content producers (who are really starting to work with the format) about the format. And I’ve come to a number of what I believe are well-informed conclusions about it, based on my nearly two decades of experience doing what I do. [Read on here…]

Welcome to a new week here at The Bits! You may have noticed that we didn’t have a My Two Cents post on Friday and there was a very good reason for that, which I’ll good into in a moment. We did, however, post a pair of new disc reviews for you in case you missed them.

Okay, there will be at least a couple updates today as I work to wrap up our coverage of CES 2016. The first is a quick one because of a bit of breaking news: Philips has just announced their own entry into the UHD Blu-ray player market, the BDP7501. It has a smaller form factor that is typical of most BD players, features HDMI 2.0a, 4K upscaling, built-in WiFi, and 4K streaming via Netflix and other digital providers. There’s no price and street date announced yet beyond sub $400 (which probably means $399, making it one of the cheaper offerings) and Spring 2016. Here’s what it looks like... [Read on here…]

All right, I’m finally back from CES 2016, after three long and exhausting days of running around the show and a harrowing late-night drive back to Southern California amid rain and snow. And I’ve gotten a good long rest to recover from all of the above.

So let’s talk about what I saw related to UHD BD on the show floor Wednesday... [Read on here…]

All right, I’m wrapping up our coverage of Press Day at CES 2016 with a quick report of key UHD-related highlights from the big afternoon press events in the day, which featured tech industry giants Samsung and Sony. [Read on here…]

CES 2016 continues in Las Vegas today with the official Press Day, during which some of the biggest CE manufacturers stage elaborate press events to highlight the products and services they play to announce at the convention. [Read on here…]

Shout! Factory has just announced its first batch of 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray titles with HDR, set to arrive in Spring/Summer of this year. All are IMAX titles. They include Journey to Space, Humpback Whales, Flight of the Butterflies, Rocky Mountain Express, Wonders of the Arctic, and The Last Reef: Cities Beneath the Sea. [Read on here…]

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